Dear Former Mayor de Blasio: Lesbians Make Great Spouses

We take names, but we won’t take your last name.

Image by James Estrin of The New York Times

“Bill de Blasio wondered if marrying a self-identified lesbian meant there was a ‘time bomb ticking’ in his marriage.” — Business Insider

What you don’t acknowledge in the airing of your personal laundry and the sour grapes gripe that your wife was going to detonate into queer rainbow glitter simply because she no longer wanted to be married to you, is just how useful lesbians are as spouses.

Let us count the ways:

1. Lesbian spouses are practical. We do not take the credit card and rack up eye-popping bills at Saks or demand custom built-ins for our stiletto collection. We’re much more likely to take your money and invest it in an ESG mutual fund and nurture it as it grows ten-fold while also tending to our indoor blacklight herb garden (fresh microgreens for dinner anyone?).
2. Lesbian spouses will not tell you what you want to hear. We won’t fill your ego with empty air and pretend you are God’s gift to planet Earth. We will tell you like it is. If your pants don’t fit right. If your resting bitch face will lose you votes. If rooting for the Red Sox should be an automatic disqualifier for New York leadership consideration.
3. We’ll tell you that you really shouldn’t run for president, unless that’s president of the Park Slope YMCA where you take spin classes every day.
4. Ingenuity is a common refrain for lesbian spouses. We will MacGyver the broken microwave and give it three extra years of life (just press the stop to start and wait a solid five seconds before removing anything until the sparks stop flying). We’ll save you the trouble of having to take the car in for a routine oil change and have the driveway shoveled before you can say “schmaltzy” and make it sound like you’re actually a real New York Jew.
5. The only time bombs you’ll see are the ones your lesbian spouse is expertly diffusing while simultaneously making a tuna casserole and playing “Closer to Fine” on a 12-string acoustic guitar.
6. Lesbian spouses make the best co-parents. We will cook and launder and tend to the children, reading with Macy and playing catch with Millie and having a fake tea party with Luca alongside a wasteful collection of stuffed animals that smell like lead poisoning (but are actually safe because lesbians test for toxins). We play mom and dad and baba and coach and teacher and housekeeper and breadwinner all in one.
7. We have married men in power before. When we do, we secretly lead from behind. We make you think you are calling the shots but it’s really us, in cargo shorts and sensible shoes, telling you how to run the country, or the city, or the bodega. It is not a formal network of lesbian spies who marry into heteronormative contacts of convenience in order to take over the world, but it is also no accident that the former lesbian, LUGs (lesbians until graduation) and bicurious among us have tended to marry men who surreptitiously ascend to power.
8. Lesbian spouses are soft but tough; round but lean; smart but colloquial. We like the outdoors but also know how to boogie down at the gay bar on a Saturday night. Also, we can write legislation after reading so much of it aimed against us.
9. We take names, but we won’t take your last name.
10. One thing is certain above all else: when we divorce you, we may not regret all those years married to a cishet man. But we will enjoy every moment of our next relationship with a bonified lesbian.

Now please pass the casserole.

Allison Hope is a writer and native New Yorker who favors humor over sadness, travel over television, and coffee over sleep.​ Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Buzzfeed, Cosmopolitan, New York Magazine, Slate, ELLE, New York Daily News, New York Post, Vice, Allure, NBC, InStyle, Refinery29, Health Magazine, Parents Magazine, and more. @bubballie on Instagram and Twitter.